The invention is in the field of medical diagnostic devices such as equipment for estimating properties of bone from ultrasound or x-ray measurements or for obtaining other medical diagnostic information, and in the field of methods of using such equipment. More specifically, the invention pertains to facilitating per-use charging for utilizing such equipment.
Typically, equipment of the type relevant to this patent specification is purchased or leased by the health care provider and no direct charge is made to the owner or lessee on a per-use basis. Some equipment may have provisions for keeping track of the cumulative in-use time, or number of patient examinations or calibration runs, and indirect charges or charges for consumables may be based thereon. It has been proposed to use special purpose cards serving as credit or debit cards to activate equipment and thus effectively charge on a per-use basis. See, e.g., commonly assigned patent application Ser. No. 09/241,973, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,234,959, which is hereby incorporated by reference herein. Still additionally, it has been proposed to use license keys to activate medical device software upon receipt of payment for products, and it has been proposed to track equipment via an Internet connection. Some examples of medical diagnostic devices of interest are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,778,045, 5,755,228, and 5,785,041, all hereby incorporated by reference herein. The ultrasound sonometer Sahara and the QDR series x-ray bone densitometers sold by the common assignee are non-limiting examples of such devices.
It is desirable in some cases to closely relate the costs of owning or operating medical diagnostic equipment to the patient examinations it carries out. One benefit can be that the equipment can be made in effect self-financing at least to some degree in that it can be purchased or leased at a lower cost and payments to the equipment supplier can be made as the equipment user is paid for patient examinations. Another is that cost can be tracked more easily, and service can be scheduled more easily by the entity servicing the equipment. Other advantages of charging the equipment operator on a fee-per-use basis will become apparent from the more detailed description below.
This patent specification describes the use of a widely accessible network such as the Internet to effect charging on a per-use basis for patient examinations with medical equipment such as bone sonometry or densitometry devices and imaging equipment. Preferably, a charge is made via an Internet or some other network connection, to a debit or credit card or some other financial card, or to an account. This charge authorizes a certain number of patient examinations or other procedures with the device. Such authorization enables the device for the prescribed number and type of procedures and then disables it.
In a preferred embodiment, a medical diagnostic device is connected as needed to a remote fee-per-use administrative center such as a server location. Such capability often is built into such medical diagnostic devices for other purposes, such as service diagnostics or remote servicing. If not already available, it can be implemented readily, using commercially available hardware and software added to the computer that typically is included in some form in the medical diagnostic device, either as a personal computer or an embedded data processing and control device. The existing or added facilities for such a connection typically comprise a modem or some other interface to a communication link such as a telephone line, and appropriate software as known in the art.
Via the Internet or similar connection, a medical device user or operator supplies to the central facility the information needed to purchase a certain number of patient examinations or other procedures. This information can include the identity of the machine and the user or operator, the desired number of procedures, and charging information such as the number of a credit or debit card or some other financial card or an account that can be charged or credit that can be used. Following a check of the information and an authorization for charging, such as the authorization typically secured by merchants when credit cards are used, the administration site declines or provisionally accepts the request. It may decline for reasons such as because the financial card has expired or because the identity of the requester or the diagnostic machine does not match the records, or for some other reason. If the administration facility provisionally accepts the request, it can display the information for verification by an employee and/or the requester, so that any changes and adjustments can be made before the transaction is finalized. Once that transaction is finalized, after the requester has confirmed the purchase of a certain number of procedures and possibly other goods or services, such as consumables, the administration facility generates an encrypted code unique to the purchase. If any goods or services in addition to patient examinations or other protocols with the medical device were purchased, appropriate arrangements are made for sending the goods or supplying the services. The financial card or account of the purchaser is debited for the amount of the purchase.
The unique, encrypted code that was generated for the purchase enables the medical device to perform the designated number of protocols. For example, it is supplied to the user or operator of the machine, who manually enters it through a keyboard or some other interface into the machine. Through suitable preinstalled programming, the machine responds by enabling itself to carry out the purchased type and number of protocols. For example, the authorized protocols can be patient examination, and the machine will disable itself after the purchased number has been carried out, but can continue to carry out calibration runs with phantoms.